Glaser to Miner: Upstate mayor, heal thyself (update)

State Director of Operations Howard Glaser has an easy solution to Syracuse Mayor Stephanie Miner’s concerns over the pension-smoothing plan offered by Gov. Andrew Cuomo: “It’s voluntary,” he told Fred Dicker on Talk 1300 AM. “Mayor Miner, if you don’t like it, don’t do it. … We’ll put the tools on the table. If you don’t take advantage of them, there’s not much we can do.”

She closed the piece by noting that while cities have proposals for solutions to the fiscal problems facing upstate cities, “What we don’t have, yet, is the leadership to arrive at a consensus on what will work. For that we need the governor.”

Glaser’s overall response to Miner’s cri de coeur might be summed up as If you can’t handle your city, there are people who can do it for you.

“What I believe she said was, look, Syracuse has been plagued by financial mismanagement for a long time: labor costs that are out of control, pension costs that are out of control. And my city has been unable to manage that fiscal problem — which, by he way, is not unique to state government or other city government. Her answer, as far as I can see in the piece as well as from other discussions, is the state should give me money to solve a financial problem that we created in Syracuse because we didn’t exert fiscal discipline. No specific proposals other than that.”

“Syracuse wants somebody else to solve that problem,” Glaser continued. “You’re elected mayor to solve problems. If you’re unwilling or unable to solve a problem in fiscal management in a city, there’s a mechanism for doing that: You ask the Legislature to create a financial control board, and the financial control board will solve the problem for you. … The only thing that doesn’t make more sense is (saying) ‘Someone else just give me more money to solve my financial problem, that my city created.'”

He called Miner’s depiction of the smoothing plan “not an accurate read,” and repeated the comparison of the plan to a fixed-rate home mortgage.

Update: Two fiscally conservative groups put out a joint statement that seems to be aimed more at Miner than Glaser; this is from Brian Sampson, Unshackle Upstate executive director, and Mike Durant, NFIB state director:

“As leaders in the movement to provide more mandate relief for our local government partners, we continue to be discouraged by the level of discourse and rhetoric, from both sides of the aisle and at both the state and local level, relative to the proposal on pensions.

Unless people want to come to the table with additional thoughts and ideas on how we can minimize the impact of pensions on local governments, then they should stop pointing their finger and snubbing their noses at the only option that is under discussion.